Cops who shot youth were drunk – witness

June 12, 2014, 10:03 pm

by Madura Ranwala

Policemen manning a check point in Pasyala shot dead a person close to midnight on Wednesday. The victim was Subash Indika Jayasinghe (23), a father of one. He was returning home on a motorcycle with a friend of his, 18-year-old Sachin Chathuranga.

The pillion rider, Sachin told media that his friend had stopped at the check point where policemen were drunk and one of them had shot Subash at point blank range.

Sachin said he had rushed his friend to hospital and the policemen had fled the scene ordering him to say that Subash had been shot because they did not heed orders to stop.

The deceased’s father said that when he went to the Nittambuwa police station to lodge a complaint, the officer on duty had ignored him and then he had gone to the Kotadeniya police and met the OIC, who said that he did not have to lodge a complaint and he could tell the Magistrate what had happened to his son.

The father of the deceased claimed that the motorcycle had not been damaged and the son had not sustained any other injury due to falling as he and his friend should have if they had tried to run away from the police without heeding orders to stop.

Asked by a journalist whether the policemen responsible for shooting had been drunk on duty, police spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana said that there had been two policemen on traffic duty at the time and they were not drunk.

He said that the matter was before the Magistrate and he would not comment any further.